The solution to these issues comes in the form of energy intelligence - real-time energy consumption information that educates and informs building stakeholders about how and when their building uses energy. Energy intelligence enables you and your building's stakeholders to tune-up your building systems and keep your building running at its most efficient level. Energy management software plays a critically important role in this ongoing tune-up, by collecting, analyzing, and communicating energy intelligence to building stakeholders, enabling them to make intelligent decisions to reduce their energy consumption, identify areas of cost savings, and reduce the environmental footprint of their building.

Energy management software gives building occupants feedback about how their behaviour affects energy consumption. For example, a facility manager could start an occupant engagement program that promotes occupants to turn off lights when leaving for lunch. The results of this program can be tracked and displayed and the occupants get feedback about their efforts. When building occupants have access to energy information, they become more aware of the how they can affect their building space. This increased awareness of energy conservation by building occupants translates directly into energy and greenhouse gas savings.

Energy intelligence gives facility managers real-time, quantitative feedback allowing them to make immediate savings after assessing a few days of information. The operational behaviour of an efficient office building is clearly indicated by its "pulse" - the rise in consumption during daytime hours and the fall of consumption to the low baseline of evenings and weekends. If your building exhibits an unhealthy pulse, facility managers can quickly identify the areas of waste and re-tune them. For example, a large conference held on a weekend requires conditioned air to be pumped in. Instead of a one-time change, the system is accidentally set to permanently condition an empty auditorium. With energy management software in place, the financial and environmental costs of this energy waste can be virtually eliminated.

When your opportunities for immediate savings have been identified and implemented, benchmarks can be established to determine which building systems are the best- and worst-performing. You can use these benchmarks to focus retrofit expenditures on the areas that will most benefit your building. After completing your building upgrades, new benchmarks for your upgraded systems ensure that your retrofits are performing at their optimal settings. Furthermore, you can compare pre-retrofit benchmarks with actual building performance to determine the real savings of your building upgrades. This will help validate the performance of your retrofits and allow you to make informed decisions about future projects in the same building or similar retrofits in other buildings.

After capturing initial savings and possibly making infrastructure upgrades, continued energy monitoring is essential to keep your building in tune. Facility managers have the ability to control and modify the operations of the equipment that use the most energy - HVAC and boiler systems. Through real-time analysis, energy management software can alert facility managers if the building systems are using more energy than expected. For example, a failed HVAC control system defaults to maximum circulation and thus maximum energy consumption. An intelligent energy analysis system will identify this as a problem and automatically alert the facility manager. This allows facility managers to be more productive, and their quick response to malfunctions reduces the amount of wasted energy.

Energy management software, and the targeted savings it enables, is good for the financial bottom line of your building from both an operational and a future-value perspective. Green buildings and associated upgrades command a premium in both rental rates and resale value. [i] In addition, these buildings see higher occupant satisfaction rates and longer tenant occupation.

Over the next few years, many places will pass legislation that will mandate organizations to account for, and ultimately pay for, their carbon emissions. Progressive organizations are beginning to track their emissions and some jurisdictions have already placed a price on carbon. Energy management software allows you to calculate greenhouse gas emissions from the real-time energy consumption of your building, and to carry out an energy conservation strategy that will reduce your building's carbon footprint.

Energy management software enables widespread improvement in your building. Your building's energy costs and carbon footprint are reduced, ROI of energy retrofits can be accurately calculated, tenancy and occupant satisfaction rates increase, facility manager efficiency and effectiveness are improved, all of this while you are doing your part to reduce global dependence on fossil fuels and mitigate climate change. All of these improvements are enabled by energy management software that collects, analyzes, and communicates the energy intelligence that will redefine the way that buildings, and building occupants, use energy.

[1] Doing Well by Doing Good? An analysis of the financial performance of green office buildings in the USA, RICS, March 2009

http://www.rics.org/Knowledgezone/Researchandreports/doingwell_300309_research.htm

David Helliwell, Co-founder and CEO, Pulse Energy

Written by :

David Helliwell